Casto Canyon: Our last day here

We have decided to leave the Red Canyon/Bryce Canyon/Zion area tomorrow.  We feel we have hiked it out.  We've hiked 45+ miles, and seen some jaw dropping sights.  All of these lands are managed by the national forest service, and they do a great job.

Tomorrow we head toward Grand Staircase/Escalante.  It's exciting to think about what we might find there.  Who knows? 

Today we decided to hike 7 miles of Casto Canyon, the last of the hikes we found in the Red Canyon area.  It was a somewhat different hike because it was on a trail that is also designated for ATVs.  For those of you who are familiar with them, ATV stands Absolutely Terrible Vehicles.  When we asked the park rangers about hiking on these trails they said we could throw rocks at them if we wanted to, but I don't think they were completely serious.

We had the canyon to ourselves for the fist 3.5 miles, but on the way back down we ran into 18 ATVs,  not that we were counting or anything.  They were all loud, polite, had drivers our age who needed to be out walking more, loud.

But what a lot of effort.  You have to buy them, maintain them, trailer them, and then can get through 20 miles of trails in about 4 hours.   What do you do then? 

So here is my new list of camping annoyances.

1.  generators (get my top spot by a huge margin)
2.  ATVs
3.  dogs on trails
4.  inconsistent opportunities for recycling on public lands

When we left we were the only car in the lot--the only people in the canyon.  For the first 3.5 miles we could hear lots of birds.  It was wonderful.

There were cattle in the area.  Red Canyon is not a National Park, so some of it may even be private land.

 

Then they started arriving.  Oh well.  

After we returned from our hike we put the camper back onto the pickup.  Took us all of 5 minutes. We are getting good at it.

Today's nature photographs.  Ants and a Horny Toad!  Horny Toads were all over the place in Oklahoma where I grew up.  We would catch them, bring them home, keep them for a day, let them loose.  Haven't seen one for ages.  Vicky spotted it.

 

Good by to this area and to this campground. We have really enjoyed it. 

Hike Report:  Casto Canyon, from Red Canyon, UT

(Note that the elevation gain changes a bit when one disables the elevation correction.  Note also that, as is typical with both my hiking and biking Garmins, elevation gain does not always equal elevation loss, even though we always start and stop in the same exact location;  I basically take an average of all of these figures to arrive at what I believe to be the best estimate of elevation gain.  I also use data from two different Garmin computer programs, which usually provide slightly different estimates (one Garmin uses Google Maps and the other uses barometric pressure to estimate elevation).  The figure I arrive at is probably accurate to within 50 feet or so, which is pretty good.  Also, usually it is within a few feet of elevation gains provided on the occasional trail map that reports elevation gains of hikes, which makes us feel confident in what we estimate when this information is not provided by trail maps.)